Job 19:17-29: a reflection

17My breath is offensive to my wife. I am loathsome to the children of my own mother. 18Even young children despise me. If I arise, they speak against me. 19All my familiar friends abhor me. They whom I loved have turned against me. 20My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh. I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. 21“Have pity on me. Have pity on me, you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me. 22Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh? 23“Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! 24That with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! 25But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth. 26After my skin is destroyed, then I will see God in my flesh, 27whom I, even I, will see on my side. My eyes will see, and not as a stranger. “My heart is consumed within me. 28If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’ because the root of the matter is found in me, 29be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.”

Job has reached a place of utter isolation. His breath is repulsive to his wife, his relatives and closest friends have turned away, even children look at him with contempt. He is reduced almost to nothing, escaped, he says, by the skin of his teeth. Few descriptions of loneliness in Scripture are as raw. He begs his friends for pity, for the hand of God has touched him and they only add to his pain.

And then, out of the depths of that abandonment, Job speaks some of the most luminous words in the Bible: I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. In the very place where he has lost everything and everyone, Job reaches past his ruin to a living Redeemer and a hope that outlasts even death. He will see God with his own eyes.

This is where faith shows its deepest strength, not in easy times but when everything else is stripped away. If you are in a season of loneliness or loss, when even those closest have drawn back, Job gives you words to hold: your Redeemer lives. The hope of the gospel does not depend on your circumstances improving. It rests on a living Redeemer who will stand at the last, and who has promised that you will see God. Cling to him when there is nothing else to cling to.

Lord, in the depths of his abandonment Job declared that his Redeemer lives, and reached past his ruin to the hope of seeing you. When I am lonely or stripped of what I leaned on, give me those same words. Let my hope rest not on my circumstances improving but on my living Redeemer, who will stand at the last. I cling to you when there is nothing else. Amen.